Tree-ring-based spring precipitation reconstruction in the Sikhote-Alin' Mountain range

Ukhvatkina, Olga; Omelko, Alexander; Kislov, Dmitriy; Zhmerenetsky, Alexander; Epifanova, Tatyana; Altman, Jan

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-951-2021

Articles | Volume 17, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-951-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-951-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 2

Research article

|

28 Apr 2021

Research article |

| 28 Apr 2021

Tree-ring-based spring precipitation reconstruction in the Sikhote-Alin' Mountain range

Olga Ukhvatkina, Alexander Omelko, Dmitriy Kislov, Alexander Zhmerenetsky, Tatyana Epifanova, and Jan Altman

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Final revised paper (published on 28 Apr 2021)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 21 Apr 2020)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review of "Tree-ring based spring precipitation reconstruction in the Sikhote- Alin Mountain Range"', Anonymous Referee #1, 25 May 2020
- AC1: 'Response to Reviewer', Olga Ukhvatkina, 08 Jun 2020
RC2: 'Review comments', Anonymous Referee #2, 01 Jun 2020
- AC2: 'Response to Reviewer', Olga Ukhvatkina, 24 Jun 2020
RC3: 'Comment on “Tree-ring based spring precipitation reconstruction in the Sikhote-Alin Mountain Range” by Olga Ukhvatkina et al.', Anonymous Referee #3, 07 Sep 2020
- AC3: 'Response to Reviewer', Olga Ukhvatkina, 30 Sep 2020

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (16 Oct 2020) by Chantal Camenisch

AR by Olga Ukhvatkina on behalf of the Authors (22 Oct 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (05 Nov 2020) by Chantal Camenisch

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (26 Nov 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Comments on “Tree-ring based spring precipitation reconstruction in the Sikhote-Alin Mountain Range” by Ukhvatkina and colleagues

The authors addressed most of the referee’s comments and suggestions. The revised manuscript is improved compared to the initial version. And I would like to thank the authors for their efforts.

Provided that the editors and other referees agree, I think that the authors deserve a chance to see their work published… Yet before acceptance, I would like the authors to consider the following points.

Major comments

1 - The authors state in the abstract (line 19-20): “Our reconstructions have 3, 15 and 60-year periods, which suggests the influence of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation on the region’s climate and relevant processes”

This sentence slightly contradicts the results presented lines 259-260: “However, we did not find any significant correlation between precipitation reconstructions and other climatic indices (NINO3, NINO4, NINO3.4, SOI, PDO and AO)”

I would encourage the author to rephrase the sentence found in the abstract or even to remove it completely.

The authors correlated instrumental data from their study area with ENSO, PDO and AO indices. The correlation values presented in the manuscript appear to be statistically significant, yet the values are not very high…

So my question is can we really conclude that PDO, AO, and ENSO have a discernible influence on Sikhote-Alin Mountain Range merely looking at correlations values?

I would encourage the authors to be really careful and to state whenever possible in the manuscript that further analysis would be required to be able to draw definitive conclusions on this matter.

Investigating the influence of modes of variability on tree-growth is now very trendy amongst dendroclimatologists. Yet in my opinion you don’t necessarily need to prove that your tree-ring reconstructions reflect past ENSO/PDO/AO variability to publish a very interesting paper.

Minor comments

Lines 71-72: « The study area is located in northeast Asia and includes three points located in the southern, central and north-western parts of the Sikhote-Alin Mountain Range, Southeastern Russia”

The author frequently employ the term “point” in the manuscript when they refer to study sites. Wouldn’t it be better to use the word “site” instead?

The author state lines 60: (3) “to analyze the periodicity of 60climatic events and their driving forces”

What about: (3) to investigate the influence of modes of variability such as ENSO, PDO on tree-growth (or on the Sikhote-Alin Mountain Range)?

Lines 110-110 […] “the COFECHA program (Holmes, 1983) was used to check the accuracy of the cross-dated measurements”.

Maybe the authors could consider adding the COFECHA output to the supplementary material.

Lines 136-137: Low-frequency time series variations in reconstructed precipitation were summarized with moving averages (5-year)

The use of word “summarized” sounds odd in this context… Obtained or an equivalent word maybe?

I am not sure that a 5 year running mean really allows you to obtain a low frequency time-series…

Lines 158-159: The statistical characteristics of the chronologies are listed in Table 2.

Shouldn’t it be Table 1?

Lines 201-203: The correlation between the precipitation reconstructions was significant at all three points yet varied as follows: 35% inthecase of CSA-NSA, 22% in the case of NSA-SSA and 44% in the case of CSA-SSA.

I am not sure that I understand this sentence…

Lines 222-224: A 5-year moving average of the reconstruction demonstrates multi-annual to decadal variation in April-June precipitation and suggests prolonged wet and dry events, most of them were in 17th and 18th centuries

Is a five 5 year running relevant to analyze decadal variations?

Line 333: draughts

Shouldn’t it be droughts?

Conclusion - Line 406: Thus, our results enable better understanding of future climatic trajectories in Northeast Asia.

I am not sure that I understand why… Could the authors provide more details?

It may have been interesting to add somewhere in the conclusion that the authors’ tree-ring chronologies could be used by the PAGES Hydro2k consortium and/or to update the MADA PDSI dataset developed by Cook et al. (2010).

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RR by Matthew Therrell (27 Jan 2021)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

January 27, 2021

Chantal Camenisch
Handling Editor
Climate of the Past

Dear Dr. Camenisch,

I have completed my review of the manuscript (cp-2020-49) "Tree-ring based spring precipitation reconstruction in the Sikhote-Alin Mountain Range" by Ukhvatkina et al. I have read the reviews provided by the three reviewers as well as the revised manuscript and believe that the authors have adequately addressed the issues raised by the reviewers. I would like to particularly applaud the authors for their grace in responding to Reviewer #1 who should be admonished for their unprofessional review. I recommend acceptance after minor revision. I offer a few suggestions for potential improvement.

1) While the manuscript is certainly readable in its current form, there are places where improvement to the written English could be made if possible. This is not necessary, only suggested.
2) The authors consistently refer to the three tree-ring sites in order from south to north. This isn’t a problem except that this makes Figure 2 appear visually inconsistent with Figure 1. That is the southernmost site is at the bottom of Figure 1 but top of Figure 2. I suggest reversing the placement of panels (a) and (b) in Figure 2. I also suggest including the tree-ring site codes next to the Met. station names e.g., “Krasniy Yar (NSA)”.
3) In section 2.2. “Tree-ring chronology development” the authors state on line 104 that “Two increment cores were extracted from living trees (then we used the one with the highest number of tree rings)…” Using only one of two collected cores is very unusual. I can’t imagine why the authors would take this approach and any dendrochronologist who reads this will think the same thing. I don’t expect the authors to completely redo their analysis but I think they should explain this choice and I would also encourage them to date and measure all the remaining material before contributing the chronologies to the ITRDB.
4) Also they stated that 136 cores were collected from 136 trees. This does not match the previous statement (two cores per tree). So did they collect 272 cores from 136 trees?
5) In Table 1 the authors appear to indicate that all trees sampled from each site were used in the chronology development. Is that true? It would be somewhat surprising if every tree sampled (longest core only) actually cross dated well enough to use in the chronology (see point 6)
6) Reviewer # 3 (point 2)) asked whether all the collected material could be crossdated. The authors response focused on whether material from one site could be crossdated against other sites and noted that it was “rather difficult”. I am a little bit confused as to why this was the case when in Figure 6 (and associated discussion) they show the common wet/dry years across the three sites. One would imagine that these common signals would allow crossdating between sites. Also I do not think that was actually Reviewer # 3’s question. I think it was more about how much of the collected material could not be crossdated at all. As I noted it seems unusual for all the material to reliably crossdate.
7) I would encourage the authors to show “spaghetti plots” of the raw and detrended tree-ring widths in the Supplementary Materials.
8) I really like the layout of Figure 3. It is very well done.
9) In the Data Availability statement the authors should add the web address of the ITRDB for those readers who may be unfamiliar.
10) I include below a reference that I was surprised was not included.

In closing I found the manuscript to be generally straightforward and reasonably well written. This is interesting and important research for our discipline, and I have no doubt that this manuscript will be a useful addition to the literature.

Please let me know if I may offer any clarification or be of any other assistance.

Sincerely,

Matthew Therrell
Professor

Refs.

Zhu, H.F., Fang, X.Q., Shao, X.M. and Yin, Z.Y., 2009. Tree ring-based February–April temperature reconstruction for Changbai Mountain in Northeast China and its implication for East Asian winter monsoon. Climate of the Past, 5(4), pp.661-666.

Referee Report: PDF

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (15 Feb 2021) by Chantal Camenisch

AR by Olga Ukhvatkina on behalf of the Authors (25 Feb 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (14 Mar 2021) by Chantal Camenisch

AR by Olga Ukhvatkina on behalf of the Authors (19 Mar 2021)

Short summary

We present the first precipitation reconstructions for three sites along a latitudinal gradient in the Sikhote-Alin' mountains (Russian Far East). The reconstructions are based on Korean pine tree rings. We found that an important limiting factor for this species growth was precipitation during the spring-to-early-summer period. The periodicity found in our reconstructions suggests the influence of El Niño–Southern Oscillation and Pacific Dedacadal Oscillation on the region's climate.